Single Review: Paris - Friendly Fires (again)

Let's keep this brief as we have all but bestowed single of the year status on this track already anyway but it is worth noting the re-release, which comes packed in with a couples of remixes.

The Aeroplane Remix lifts the foot of the gas slightly to create a more electronic but slower paced track. Befittingly it sounds French (Aeroplane are actually from the home of Soulwax and the Glimmers, Ghent in Belgium) but importantly it gives those lovely Au Revoir Simone vocals a bit more space. The result is a bit melancholic and beautiful, a soundtrack for the journey home from Paris rather than the trip out.

The Justus Köhncke Remix is similar in many ways but twists things in a slightly different direction. It still feels retrospective but has a touch more positivity. It lacks those Au Revoir vox though but what it does have my friends, is space. Bags of it. Over it's ten minutes it is one of those pieces of music that is more about the parts that aren't played than those that aren't. The drum kick is nice and fresh and it combines well with some warm melodic instrumentation to make a sophisticated big room sound that is much more understated than you would expect from a remix of a track as exciting as Paris.

Both are awesome and compliment each other well. Grab on iTunes, eMusic, Boomkat or in Woolworths (joke, they've probably closed down since I wrote this).

BP x

Album Review: Music Components - Rebotini

It's nearing Christmas, a time when BlackPlastic has to go digging a little harder through the racks than normal as the release schedule dries up.

The benefit of such dry spells is that they sometimes lead to you finding something a little different, like a copy of Rebotini's Music Components which BlackPlastic came across in Toulouse recently. Rebotini is part of Black Strobe, a group that (once they went their separate ways with Ivan Smagghe) seemed to lose all sense of what made them fantastic and so turned into a goth techno band as an outlet. Their début album, Burn Your Own Church, was not without charms but wasn't want people wants particularly either. Music Components, in some ways at least, goes back and delivers on the original promise.

This is an album of musical constructions produced using a selection of classic synthesizers. It's entirely instrumental, filmic in nature and jet black. An in that sense, it is a better realization of Black Strobe's promise that Black Strobe themselves are. The snide vocals of a 'Me and Madonna' would have been great but the throbbing electronics here are enough to deliver.

This isn't an album that needs much to be said - if you liked 'Inner Strings' and the thought of an album's worth doesn't sound boring then this is worth seeking out.

BP x

Single Review: Dream On - Christian Falk feat. Robyn

Even all this time after the haunting melodies of 'With Every Heartbeat' first pricked up BlackPlastic's ears Robyn still holds a special place: worth at least five Britneys, her music is access, beauty and lightening in one. And yet it is all also old...

As fresh as the last album sounded much of it had existed in one form or another for years and the same is true of this latest piece with Christian Falk. But what makes Robyn one of BlackPlastic's favourite popstresses is the fact that even tracks that have been around a while still sound newer than anything Brit or Xtina have released in pure time.

'Dream On' is your life support system but rather than being made of wires and tubes and maths it is people and friends and wave upon wave of familiarity and reassurance, layer upon layer. As Robyn confirms:

"Rest you weary heads - All is well: You won't be strip-searched, hung-up tonight.
You won't be cut-up, bleeding tonight.
You won't be strung out, cold, shaking to your bones wishing you were anywhere else but right here."

The lyrics may seem cold but the delivery is anything but and when Robyn confidently assures BlackPlastic that they won't want to be anywhere but here our instincts are naturally to trust her: there is nothing but joy here.

BP x

Album Review: Secret Machines - Secret Machines

Secret Machines are back, this time with an eponymous, self-released follow up to 2006's Ten Silver Drops. The pop sensibilities have lost out to a heavier sound, more reminiscent of the glorious Now Here Is Nowhere, yet the sure scale of some of Ten Silver Drops' larger moments (the lovely 'Alone, Jealous & Stones') are maintained.

The effect is an album that feels like one-step-back to Ten Silver Drops' two-steps-forward but trust BlackPlastic when we say this is a good thing. The slight lack of unified direction that album suffered from is no longer a problem. What is left is a focused, taught album of progressive rock tracks, be it the space opera of 'I Never Thought To Ask' or the psychotic breakdown of 'The Walls Are Starting To Crack', that will make you feel like you are living in a David Bowie movie.

The self-released aspect may make this trickier to come across but it's still available via the usual channels (iTunes, Amazon) and, as with the rest of the Secret Machines catalogue, it is well worth picking up. Nobody does epics on this scale and as the closing 'The Fire Is Waiting' kicks in the band sound more like a rocket ship departing the launch pad than any of their earth-bound contemporaries.

BP x

Album Review: Convivial - Luomo

Ever since Sasu Ripatti's first album under his Luomo pseudonym, Vocalcity, came out in 2000 it has always received high praise within certain circles. A blogger's favourite, the album's minimalist design and sophisticated textures gained it favour with those prepared to put in the effort. Sadly the cost of this was an album without much mass appeal and so, whilst those that know it generally love it, you are unlikely to find a copy in Tesco.

Several Luomo projects on (Ripatti has several other alter egos) and Convivial could just change all that: it features vocals recorded by a series of guests. Combined with, in places at least, the cold yet organic sound of Ripatti's production you get a mature album that neatly sidesteps any of the issues house (or in this case, minimal / tech-house) albums usually have by just making an album full off those crossover tracks that are gold in the clubs but have vocals good enough to make them work at home.

And so you have Apparat's vocals combined with a pretty ferocious percussion backing on the spooky 'Love You All' and Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears on 'If I Can't'. Robert Owens also guests on 'Robert's Reason', a nice deep-tech-house track, full of funky bleeps and stabs that would be one of Owens' finest pieces in recent memory if only his turn on Layo & Bushwacka!'s debut album, 'Low Life', weren't so damn good that it sticks in your head like your first kiss. The rest of the album's guests may not be as high profile but the music itself shines just as consistently.

But maybe, in some respects, that is a problem. Convivial is, much like Morgan Geist's Double Night Time, undoubtedly a labour of love. It has been less 'recorded', more carved, like something a carpenter might make out of a block of wood. Yet the result is an album that is so consistent and singular in its sound and vision that, in reality, each track sounds best when separated from the surroundings of the rest of the album so it has room to breath.

Having said which Convivial is still a good album. It takes the the foundations of previous Luomo albums and builds on these and the level of sophistication never drops below a dinner-party-for-people-in-their-late-twenties level. BlackPlastic just craves for a few bolder moves that stray a bit further from the comfort zone.

BP x

Album Review: Kitsuné Maison Compilation 6 - Various

Like a bunch of angry youths ditching their regular stabby, dull knives for lovely fresh luminous flick knives the new Kitsuné Maison Compilation (that's 6 to you) leaves behind a little (just a little) of the roughness in favour of some lovely hooks. That's right, Kitsuné Maison 6 is dubbed 'The Melodic One', almost like it is a two-dimensional character within a sitcom.

But it isn't two dimensional, is it? No, because it has melody, in the form of Lo-Fi-Fnk's gorgeously downbeat 'Want U' for example, but it also has nastiness - just check out the rather aggressive 'Say Whoa' by A-Trak or Etienne De Crecy's clanging 'Hanukkah'.

Maison 6's best moments see the above two approaches combined. The burst-ear-drum attack of You Love Her Coz Shes Dead's 'Superheroes' is drenched in distortion and melodies and shouts and hooks and it's like going from being 12 to 25 in three minutes. D.I.M.'s remix of Fischerspooner's 'Danse En France' takes the mildly subtle original, douses it in petrol and then spits a fag at it and the result is a bass line to alienate friends and lovers with but a salve is provided in the melodic hook that has been retained for the bridge.

Predictably then it's all rather good and dependable, a bit like PG Tips for nu-rave kids with glowsticks. If you haven't ever bought a Kitsuné compilation this is what to expect: the sound of that cool alt.friend everyone has, six months early. If you have bought one of the previous releases then chances are you actually are that cool alt.friend so you probably don't need this review.

BP x

Album Review: Tapes - Various mixed by The Rapture

BlackPlastic has had a holiday - if you felt lonely in our absence then sorry.  If you didn't notice then well done, you successfully hurt our feelings.

Following on from last album, Pieces of the People We Love, and further demonstrating their eclectic tastes The Rapture are back with their first mix album, out on the ever reliable K7 imprint.

And it is, for the most part, a basement booty shaking riot that takes in thrills, spills and bellyaches in quick secession with tracks such as The Bar-Kays 'Holy Ghost' appearing in a track list alongside Ghostface Killah and 'Where's Jason K?' from the DFA's Syclops.

And BlackPlastic says "for the main part" because it, whilst it appreciates the guys' effort, it still isn't really ready to revisit Paul Johnson's 'Get Get Down'. On the flipside the band to incorporate a bit of Armand Van Helden's 'Flowerz' and, rather than spoiling the mix, it acts as a high point. It's undoubtedly one of Armand's finer, more subtle moments, and it shines as a result.

Overall this set represents a fantastic party soundtrack and whether it is in sunny disco in the form of Northend's 'Tee's Happy' or the 70s urban party chic twisted up into a k-hold that is Dances With White Girls' 'Everybody's Got to Make a Living' there is something to move you.

BP x